It can be done that way. The trouble is that hashes don't offer any validation. You could mis-spell it as $data{vaule} somewhere leading to errors which can be hard to detect.

An object would be more appropriate. $data->vaule will throw an exception if the vaule method does not exist.

Creating full classes for each struct you need may seem like a lot of work, but there are various CPAN modules to make it easier for you, such as Class::Struct and MooseX::Struct. Here's an example using MooX::Struct (which I am the author of):